“There was a moment there, a 24-hour period, when several Democrats expressed a great deal of interest in the framework I laid out” . . . .
Then the [Democratic] committee members, I think, checked in with some of their Senate colleagues and really allowed themselves to be swayed by the left-wing of their caucus. They backed off, retreated, from the progress we made that night. And from that moment on, it never felt like we were close.”
As part of a broader plan to rein in entitlement spending and reform the tax code, Toomey had offered to raise tax revenues $250 billion over 10 years. “What I said was, we should set a goal of getting all the tax rates lower by 20 percent — across the board … And then let’s find the combination of deductions that we would diminish, and exclusions that we would treat as taxable income,” Toomey recalls. “I was willing to accept that the $250 billion … revenue increase would come from the top two [tax] brackets, which was another huge concession to the Democrats. That by definition makes the tax code more progressive.”